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Peppers in soy sauce

ahayastani

ahayastani

I've had some kind of infection and was confined to the sofa for a few days. It gave me some opportunity to do a bit of youtube-browing and came across a few interesting youtube channels. I was completely unaware of a pepper preparation by "Guangxi grandma", who stores peppers in soy sauce (+ some sugar). The peppers are then consumed straight from the jar or added to a stir fry. Is anyone familiar with this type preparation, and does it have a particular name?

Here it the complete video, the actual preparation begins around 4:40

 
Grass Snake said:
Think it maybe called "Paojiao" which translates to pickled pepper.
Click to expand...

I'm very unfamiliar with Chinese traditions and cuisine, but what google shows me when searching for "paojiao" is something else, and indeed corresponds more to "pickled pepper".

After some searching, I found a lead on Amazon JP, which has an option to show content in Chinese and so gave me some characters to play with. "广西特产酱香味五彩泡椒" (Guangxi specialty sauce flavourful colourful pickled pepper) gives lots of hits from China for me. Also on Youtube (I don't understand what they're talking about though):



Most hits, however, are linked to "特产酱香味五彩泡椒", not to Guangxi, and I'm given the impression this type of "colourful" pepper (5-colour pepper ?) is generally pickled in soy sauce.
 
I have not heard of this, and I'm not familiar with Chinese traditions either, but this scares me a little. The pH of soy sauce is 4.4 - 5.4, and sugar is 7. Not a safe range for "pickling". But, the Chinese have been pickling and fermenting for thousands of years, so who am I to question, lol.
 
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Downriver said:
I have not heard of this, and I'm not familiar with Chinese traditions either, but this scares me a little. The pH of soy sauce is 4.4 - 5.4, and sugar is 7. Not a safe range for "pickling". But, the Chinese have been pickling and fermenting for thousands of years, so who am I to question, lol.
Click to expand...

Initially, I didn't see the process as a fermentation, but more as an infusion of peppers with soy sauce for taste (I have very little practical experience with intended fermentations). But it does make sense... Soy sauce as starter, just a very high relative amount... I guess (because I'm hypothesizing here) that the high salt concentration and high relative amount of fermenting micro-organisms in the soy sauce give the fermenters an edge. Perhaps this only works if the soy sauce is not pasteurized, because otherwise fermentation depends on the wild-type fermenting micro-organisms from the peppers and soy sauce is just a "fancy" brine source?
 
So glad to see i am not the only one looking at videos with chinese woman cooking and gardening on youtube! 😅
I'm a great fan of the Liziqi channel! I can spend hours watching these videos!!!
Although i don't understand chinese at all, these just speak for themselves.
It's the combination of food (preperation) and gardening set in a rural and quite ancient type setting that really captivates me.


I think you're right about the salt and fermentors in the soy sauce. When i make Kimchi i just salt the cabbage and together with the fish sauce in the "marinade" it starts fermenting rather fast and the PH also drops fast this way.
 
reviving this thread but with cultural info - I'm half Chinese - in my family, it's not called anything, just something we do, but only with dried peppers. The fresh ones might be more regional. My mother keeps two jugs of soy sauce, one spicy one, one without. The peppers do rehydrate ever so slightly in the sauce, and you can tell how long they've been in the jug by how dark they are. Note that this is over years, they don't get noticeably more brown in a month.

Mostly we do it just to have spicy hot sauce, but the peppers yes can go into stir fries etc, delicious sliced over eggs and rice, and sometimes they get put in our "old water" sauce. You'll notice that in this recipe there's no heat, which is the traditional way, but it's very tasty with the richness of the peppers. If you're interested in making your own old water, unlike restaurants, my family we don't keep it boiling, so after we're finished with it, we put it in the fridge to separate the fat then chuck it back in the freezer. The old stock is then used as the base for the new stock the next time we make it, just adding water to cover what we're making in it next and upping aromatics until it feels right.
 
Downriver said:
The pH of soy sauce is 4.4 - 5.4, and sugar is 7. Not a safe range for "pickling".
Click to expand...
But soy sauce is 10% salt, which is what allows it to be kept at room temperature and not the the pH alone.
 
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